Porcelain
by walkingwings
Summary: Post-episode for s02e13: irresistible. Scully's psychological trauma/thought process after what happens with Donnie Pfaster and the way she deals with it


Donnie Pfaster's putrid voice is still iron-hot inside her pounding skull, ingrained in ways she knows will be permanent. Trying not to think about those devilish eyes gaping down at her tied up form–as if she were nothing but an object to be used for his twisted desires–only makes her head pound with more intensity.

Her partner's voice echoes in and out like broken fragments of truth.

 _'..if you're having trouble with this case, I want you tell me.'_  
 _'..I just don't want you to think you have to hide anything from me.'_

He tried to warn her and over and over at the beginning of this detestable case, but she refused not to try. That isn't who she is–at least, it wasn't yesterday. She desperately wishes she would've listened–wishes she would've pushed her own pride aside long enough to see that this case _terrified_ her. But Dana Scully has never wanted to be the weak link. This is irony in its purest, most disgusting form and it's worse that she knows it.

 _Normal or dry?_  
 _Where are you going?_  
 _I know this house._  
 _There's nowhere to go._

The knowledge that she was almost one of those dead, defiled women turns something wretched inside her and doesn't let up. _It wasn't enough that they were dead, they had to be torn up too._

The whole thing comes back to her in pieces–out of order and distorted.

The way she tried to defend herself. The way he teased and played with her like killing her would just be the unexciting part. How she was knocked down and he was on top of her and it was _about to happen_ until the door swung open and the police took the devil away.

Afterward, she pretended her pulse wasn't pounding all over the place and her intakes weren't too shallow. She told herself she was okay–she just _was_ because there was no other option except to be. But then Mulder was kneeling in front of her and trying to get her back up. Then he put those two fingers under her chin, tilting her head up and unleashing all the things she had been trying desperately to hold inside until she was alone and prepared to deal with it.

Her wide eyes told the truth and his knew it. This was the precise moment in which she came undone, and the sight of her tiny form wracked with sobs was a tragedy to every person who tried not to watch. With her face pressed into his warm jacket and inside their personal space, nothing else was important or could've interrupted it.

He just whispered _it's okay it's okay it's okay it's okay_ until she almost believed it was.

When he pulled her into that embrace without a second thought and promptly hid her from the outside, she dissolved. She wept within his tight hold and yet, she never felt weak while they stood there in the place where she was nearly torn to pieces.

 _'I'm okay, just help me get my wrists undone.'_  
 _'You sure you don't want to sit down, Scully? Have someone take a look at you?'_

Peering at her pitiful form in the dirty mirror inside the motel bathroom that's too small and too uncomfortable only solidifies what she already knows: tonight, she is a ghost with wet eyes drifting between lack of feeling and overwhelming discomfort. Her face is discolored and streaked with tears that won't seem to dry up. Usually bright blue eyes stare back at her–dull and lifeless. She turns the light off. The one who did this to her is sick and twisted and sadistic and worst of all– _undead_. Years of therapy will never make this okay.

Donnie Pfaster is a predator in its most tainted form, and though he's in prison, he isn't done–he'll probably kill more women and it's _too overwhelming_. The light of the moon through the dingy motel window allows her to see the deep marks imprinted on her wrists even after the lights are turned off. Each wrist is identically welted and they sting in ways other than physically.

A knock at the door brings Scully out of thought. It's soft, but prominent. _Mulder_. Though she knows it's him, something inside her still jumps and she despises it. It's the second time he's knocked but she can't bring herself to open the door yet. She knows he's probably been perched outside for the past couple hours, just waiting for her to say she needs him. She won't–they both know that–but if the only way she'll let him be there for her is on the other side of the door, she knows he'll do that too.

"Scully?" he talks this time, and he sounds so worried that she almost thinks about opening the door and closing the divide she's put up between them. "I know you probably don't want to talk about it and–that's okay. But you don't have to isolate yourself in there. I-I'm here, okay? Even if you want to keep the door locked and even if you won't let me in."

Her feet drag her to the door before she knows it, trembling fingers trying desperately to grasp the doorknob. When it's open, Mulder's worried gaze tells her everything she needs to know about her physical state.

Tonight, Scully's face is that of a porcelain doll's–beautiful, but prone to shatter at the slightest unwelcome touch. It's tear streaked and discolored and perhaps, she thinks, this is why Mulder is having difficulty peering at her for too long before his tired eyes turn desolate.

She nods up and down because she doesn't trust herself to speak just yet. Then he's softly pushing them into the room when her limbs turn phantom. Once the door is tightly shut and the room is only illuminated by the moon outside the window, he turns to her and she tries her best to look like a person instead of the zombie she feels like. Her throat is tight and dry and she knows he understands this.

Mulder looks like he wants to touch her but doesn't know what to do. Scully doesn't trust that her lips won't tremble when she tries to speak and she's never wanted to yell out this desperately.

"Is it still painful?"

She doesn't know if he means the wounds or something else entirely, but she nods either way.

Then he's determined and walking, and though he practically towers over everything, he's never once looked down on her. He reaches out to touch her wrists, his hands too warm and his pulse too slow.

"Is this okay?" he whispers.

"Yes," she answers quietly, because it _is_ okay now that the door's been opened and her lips are no longer painfully stuck between teeth.

 _'Is it your partner? Is there an issue with trust?'_  
 _'..I trust him with my life. I don't want him to feel like he has to protect me.'_

They don't talk, just sit together near the old toilet as Mulder dresses her wounds with whatever's there to use. She turned down the paramedics, but this isn't that. Tomorrow, they'll be on the plane back to Washington and this whole thing will be a part of the past. But tonight, Mulder holds her upright and doesn't judge her when the tears begin to drip one by one. Tonight, he plays doctor and she plays patient–so incredibly opposite to what they're used to that they might've joked about it if today weren't today.

She's disjointed and whittled down but he doesn't treat her differently. Scully will never understand the urge some people have to destroy and taint pure things, but she understands this.


End file.
